Tonight it is raining over New York City. And towers of rain stand in the streets Between towers of light, and shatter Over your upturned face as it rises To the sidewalk among subway shoals.

Tonight a secret is being born. You hear rustling of hands Tearing open the envelope of What you know. At your feet Eddies of a scattered alphabet, A trace of ash left on your eye Lash by a sudden lightning flash.

Tonight something is opening Its wings among the fissures of Your scarred heart. You must Now find its name hidden in All these unread lines of rain.

The world is full of paper. Write to me. ~Agha Shahid Ali

Today evening when I saw a rain tree shaking its golden tassels in the storm-wind, I couldn’t but remember bangles on her hands closing over my eyes from behind.

Once around midnight, in a supermarket, an old man started questioning me in Hindustani. I couldn’t reply for my tongue kept tripping on stones, words of that world were hiding behind.

Last year in the mohallas of a city, a constant interrogative from strangers: have you returned? As I answered, “Yes, only for a few weeks”, I knew exile was a skin one cannot slough behind.

Behind a windscreen blurred by rain, when I saw her intimate, lovely Judas face kissing, I crossed the street yet her finely wrought dagger of betrayal stabbed me from behind.

From memory’s iron manacles, O Sashi, how will you yourself unbind, When that ivory painted trunk filled with all the keys you have left behind?

Heart, let no memory enter tonight. Body, don’t trash with thunder, for with time Everything will recede to a proper distance. Pain will slowly drift into tonight’s rain.

Friend, be still at least in my dreams even as You recede into a landscape veiled with smoke, Blockading all the mud-slick roads behind.

God will be called from minarets in The coming dawn. But I shall stay silent Behind the windows of this unmapped alley. I won’t pray for a cure to this insomnia.

Borrowing words I shall ask, will you permit me Voyage into your angular hands some night?